The Cemetery Dawn
by StrangePhenomenon
Summary: Glee Zombie AU. Rated M for violence, character death, and sexual situations. Total fic header inside. VERY SMALL CHAPTER 3 UP!
1. Chapter 1

**Title:** The Cemetery Dawn**  
Rating:** R  
**Characters/Pairing:** Eventual Puck/Kurt; other minor pairings  
**Warnings: **Character death and gore. Also: slash and femslash.  
**Spoilers: **All episodes that are out, to be safe.  
**Disclaimer:** All characters and settings(except those of my own creation) belong to Fox.  
**Author's Note:** Title comes from the wonderful song Magenta by Hooverphonic. Also: this is the first part of a zombie AU that I meant to enter into GleeBigBang. There were some personal issues, I never finished it, and now I'm posting it in bits and pieces. This version is also a little bit longer than the one on my LJ.  
**Summary:** Zombie AU.  
**Word Count:** 1,543

_Prologue_

T.S. Eliot said the world ended with a whimper, not a bang. Maybe that's true, somewhere. But here, in the empty halls of William McKinley High School, that is not what happens.

This is what does.

_Day One_

Not a bang or a whimper. A scream.

It sounds like someone being eviscerated, or someone who has just watched their child die, or maybe someone who has seen too much and cannot think of what else to do. It comes from a boy, huddled by a bank of lockers, his books a haphazard pile by his feet. He screams and screams – in hatred, in pain, in fear. Some things cannot be kept inside. The sound echoes around the darkened hallways, and it does not stop even when it does.

But no one can hear it. They've all gone home.

_Day Two_

The next day, it starts with a gasp. A gasp of terror, a gasp of disgust – it doesn't matter.

What does matter is that a girl, named Azalea, has just found a dead boy by her locker. He doesn't look even remotely asleep. His eyes are red and staring and they look so _awake_ that she thinks for a moment that he might reach out and grab her. His fingernails have made long scratches where he clutched his arms; blood drips for one of the long gashes. Azalea has got some on her. She wipes it off hurriedly, and that is where it should end, but of course it doesn't. As she runs screaming to the first teacher she can find, the disease is already working her way into her system.

_Kurt_

Mr. Schuester is the first to die. And Kurt sees it all.

Well, he's not really the first. There's the boy who started it. The girl who spread it.

But Mr. Schuester is the first person that Kurt really knows, _trusts_, even when he's denying Kurt a solo or not noticing the crowd of bullies circling around him.

He's also the first to be ripped apart, torn at by so many fingernails and teeth.

After the girl stops sobbing about the dead boy but before her fingers make their imprint in Mr. Schue's flesh, Kurt sees a glint in her eyes. A glint of hatred. A glint of hunger. Then, a sickening crunch, and Kurt is running as fast as he can. His feet hit the floor with hollow thuds. He's never been quite so afraid in his life, and behind him the screams go on and on and do not stop, combine into one loud roar, and Kurt runs faster.

_Thud. Thud. Thud._

He comes to the choir room and stops, sliding a little and smacking his hip on the doorknob.

"Ow," Kurt mutters, and locks himself in, then slumps into his usual chair. He's not sure why he came here,

[ _yes you are, because it means safety and friendship and where else would you go, anyway? _]

knows that, tactically, it is not a good place to be. His childhood obsession with horror movies tells him that much – too many windows, too few hiding places. Also, there's a loud rustling noise coming from Mr. Schue's

[ _ripping, ripping, hot bolts of agony and he screams _]

office.

_Shit_, Kurt thinks, and grabs the nearest heavy object – a music stand. Brandishing it in front of him, Kurt inches towards the office. The rustling is getting louder. He opens the door as suddenly as possible and raises the music stand in a way that he hopes is threatening. It's only Puck, though, kissing down the neck of a partially clad Santana who is lying on Mr. Schue's desk. That's where the rustling was coming from, the papers under Santana, Kurt realizes as he drops the music stand with a crash. Both of them jump and stare at him as though they've just caught _him_ making out in a dead man's office.

"What are you _doing_ here?" Puck growls. "We're _busy_."

"I thought –" Puck arches an eyebrow. Kurt gives him an exasperated glare in return. "Do you really not know what's going on?"

Puck looks dumbfounded.

"The majority of the school is running around _screaming in terror_. How did you not notice?"

"Um. I thought –" Kurt smirks at the way Puck is mirroring his earlier words. " – isn't it a pep rally?"

"Honestly, Puckerman, there are times when your stupidity makes me wonder –" How you're still alive, he means to say. But he can't, not when he's just seen one of the only adults he even comes[ _came_ ] close to trusting be literally torn limb from limb.

He swallows instead, then continues a moment later in a quieter voice. "I don't know exactly what's happening. Everyone started going crazy…attacking each other…it's," he laughs, a quiet, mirthless sound, "it's like zombies."

"Well, fuck."

The expletive comes from Santana; Kurt almost forgot she was there at all. Now, though, he notices that she's rummaging through the junk on Mr. Schue's desk. Finally, she huffs out an exasperated breath and breaks a trophy case, pulling out the biggest.

Puck is staring at her. "What exactly are you doing?"

She marches out into the choir room, trophy in hand. Kurt and Puck follow without thinking.

Santana turns to face them. "I'm going to find Brittany," she says. "Coming?"

"What – are –" Kurt splutters. After a moment of trying to regain speech, he hisses, "_Are you insane?_ If you go out there with a _trophy_ to defend yourself, you will _die_."

Her face is like stone. "What would you suggest?"

"Staying here?" Puck interjects.

Santana rounds on him. "If you think I'm leaving Brittany out there to –" She stops abruptly, and then practically _snarls_ at Kurt, "I would think that you wouldn't want to leave Aretha out there anyway."

Kurt feels a rush of guilt. He had completely forgotten about Mercedes, about Tina, about Finn…about pretty much everything but this room. He swallows. "Yeah. Okay. But there has to be a better way than storming out into a crowd of zombies."

Puck actually winces. "Could you not use that word?"

Kurt raises an eyebrow that says, _really_? , then turns back to the situation at hand.

"Okay," Santana acquiesces. She stands straighter. "So what's your brilliant plan, Fancypants?"

Kurt ignores the insult [ from School of Rock, no less – really, Santana? ] and surveys the room. A memory comes to him – watching reruns of Buffy every Saturday with his dad. It had worked out surprisingly well – plenty of violence for his dad, and Kurt got to ogle Angel and later, Spike. Spike. His favorite episode, _School Hard_, had been the first one with Spike in it. Buffy had been separated from her friends…she had gone…

"Through the ceiling," he says. The other two look at him, nonplussed. He continues, "This is one of the older rooms, it's got a drop ceiling. You can push up the tiles. We could go up in it, hear when it's quiet down below…"

Santana and Puck say nothing.

"Like in the Breakfast Club?" Kurt tries. Still no response. Kurt rolls his eyes. "Oh, stop looking at me like that. You asked me for a better plan, I gave you one." He pauses. "Unless you'd prefer to go out _there_?"

Someone chooses that moment to slam against the door, hard. The screaming is right outside by now.

Santana looks at the door, then at Kurt. "Alright," she says. "Let's try it. But you're going first."

_Mike_

There should have been a before, and there should have been an after.

But like when you've been cold for so long you can't remember what warm is, Mike can't remember what it had been like, before. Before all he could think about was _will I see the next day?_

Before he had seen people screaming as they died.

The fact that he, Matt, Artie, and Tina are crammed into a tiny janitor's closet really isn't helping matters. The door is shaking, too, trembling on its hinges as though it could fall any second. It's really not a comforting sight. Mike closes his eyes, leans into Matt, and waits.

_Emma_

It had all happened so suddenly.

One minute, Emma is listening with exasperation to just _why_ Karofsky needed to shove Kurt into a locker with a wink and a whisper of _homo_, and trying to explain to Brittany why spray painting ducks all over the cafeteria is _not a good thing to do_.

The next, she and about fifty students are barricaded in the cafeteria, and she is yelling at them to _shut up_, do they want to die? It works surprisingly well to subdue them; the screaming from outside isn't hurting, either. Emma lets out a shaky breath and thanks whatever Powers that Be that there is blue paper over all the windows, to add _atmosphere_, according to Figgins.

Off in a corner, Brittany is comforting a shaking boy, her hand rubbing soothing circles on his back as she tells him to look at the ducks, aren't they pretty?

Emma smiles in spite of herself, then goes to comfort a group of sophomores.

It's her job, after all.

_Mercedes_

For Mercedes, it starts when Kurt races past the classroom in which she and Quinn are tutoring Finn. And really, the fact that it takes both of them to tutor Finn is sort of ridiculous.

Anyway, they're trying to explain to Finn that yes, words can look different than the way they're said, when all of a sudden, they hear what sounds like a man screaming.

[ _they'll find out later that it was Mr. Schuester, and they'll shudder at the image of red and screaming and agony beyond belief, but for now they are blissfully ignorant._ ]

About a minute later, Kurt runs by, feet hitting the floor in a way that sounds almost painful. His face is terrified and sad, and his eyes are swimming. He goes by, a blur of designer clothing, and they sit there, staring at the space he left behind.

Finn breaks the silence.

"Am I on crack, or did Kurt just run by looking like someone set his Paul McCartney on fire?"

"Stella," Mercedes corrects automatically. "And yes he did. I wonder what's up with that?" She gets up and peeks out into the hallway, but Kurt is long out of sight.

"It's probably nothing," Quinn says from right behind Mercedes, making Mercedes jump about a foot.

"Stop walking so _quietly_," she hisses. "You're going to give me a heart attack someday."

Quinn doesn't appear to be listening. She says, "Do you hear that?"

Mercedes does. It's screaming.


	2. Chapter 2

They get out of that room just about as fast as they can, running down the halls to try and find a safe haven.

"Of course," Quinn puffs, "of _course_ we had to choose the _one_ room for tutoring with a door that doesn't lock."

The three of them turn into a deserted hallway. Deserted is good, but it's a dead end and they have no way to barricade themselves off. They stand there for a minute, panting. Outside, Mercedes can see some of the…whatever they are…burst out of the school.

"Jesus," she whispers. The other two look at her questioningly, and she gestures to where she had been looking. "It's going to spread…it's like…"

She doesn't finish that sentence.

They just stand there for a moment, looking at the floor. Mercedes can hear the enormous din getting closer.

[ _they'll be here soon._ ]

They will. Too soon. And when they're here –

[ _you'll be dead._ ]

Apparently Quinn can hear it, too, because she says, "We'd better get go –" But she's cut off by a monstrous crashing sound. It looks like part of the ceiling has collapsed. Quinn grabs an errant chair and brandishes it at the wreckage, which is beginning to stir. Weirdly, amidst the broken ceiling tiles, Mercedes can also see the remains of a trophy.

Mercedes' jaw drops as three extremely dusty figures emerge – Puck, Kurt, and Santana. Kurt is currently punching Puck on the upper arm.

"_Moron_," Kurt spits. "What were you _thinking_? Oh, that's right, nothing. As usual."

Puck pushes Kurt a little. 'Oh, really? This was _your_ idea, Fancypants."

Kurt looks like he could cheerfully murder Puck as Puck utters the last word. Before he can start abusing Puck again, though, Santana shoves the two apart.

"You are _both_ morons. Get a fucking room already –" Kurt twitches with surprise, and one of Puck's eyebrows arches. "– and realize that we have bigger problems." She turns away from the incredulous boys and says, quite calmly, "Hey, Quinn, Finn, Aretha. Sorry that their sexual tension is causing problems again."

Kurt splutters at that for a moment, then subsides and makes his way over to Mercedes to give her a lung-crushing hug. Once she peels herself away, Mercedes looks at Kurt and asks, "What _happened_?"

Kurt sighs, then begins to explain what has happened. The mood darkens considerably as he tells them, breaking off a few times to stare at the wall, his jaw working, about what happened to Mr. Schuester. How he hid in the choir room, then found Puck and Santana, how they crawled through the ceiling to find somewhere safe.

"And then," Kurt finishes, "this _utter imbecile_ said that this was a good place to come out, and broke through the ceiling before I could offer a better plan." He levels an acid glare at Puck.

"Don't get your panties in a twist, Hummel. I was right, wasn't I?"

Santana rolls her eyes. "Well, now that we've all caught up…" She waves the still-squabbling boys down the hall, and the rest of them follow begrudgingly. Finn is watching Puck and Kurt argue, his mouth open slightly.

Santana hisses, "Come _on_, you guys, we don't have much time."

A group of the…things…comes running down the halls towards them. Santana raises her eyebrows as if to say, _point proven, yes? _, and they all begin running again.

_Mike _

Mike knows the door won't last much longer. All they can do is run, at this point.

So when the door falls(to the outside, thank God), they make a break for it. They're free, they can outrun these things, easy, they'll live –

Mike hears someone cry out behind him.

He knows that voice.

He turns, and Artie is being torn from his chair. Turns out a wheelchair becomes that much more of a liability in a situation like this.

He can see Matt fighting his way towards Artie, and Mike's mouth shapes a word something like _no_ and something like _don't_, and Matt goes down beneath a pile of the things.

Mike's eyes are stinging. He swipes at them angrily, grabs Tina's hand, and runs.

_Mercedes_

Mercedes isn't sure how long she's been running. Too long, she knows that much, and she thanks her brief training on the Cheerios for the fact that she's lasted this long.

But it gets so much worse when she looks at the people next to her, and Quinn isn't one of them.

She almost stops and tells the others, but she knows they can't think about it right now. Mercedes continues to run, tears spilling from her eyes, chanting silently, _I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Sorry, Quinn._

Finn's face is set as he runs, and she thinks he must already know.

_Emma_

It turns out that keeping fifty terrified teenagers quiet is not the easiest thing to do.

They just won't _shut up_.

Emma thinks she knows what going insane is like. She thinks the students know, too.

Another problem soon arises; there are windows in the door, small ones, with no paper covering them.

So when Becky's pleading, blood covered face presses against the glass, and she bangs her fists on the door, shrieking _please_ and _help_ and _oh, god_…

They can see it all. A student grabs the handle, begins to turn it.

"_Don't open that goddam door!_" Emma screams. But it's too late. All she can do is grab Brittany and get the hell out. Karofsky follows, and she pauses to push him in front of her, shielding him fro the mob behind as much as she can.

She can't run very fast, though, with the shoes she's wearing – candy-pink spike heels to match her skirt and cardigan, her second-favorites. As she falls, she sees Karofsky pulling Brittany along, and smiles. A shadow falls over her, and she looks at the crazed, ravaged face looming above her.

"Will?" she breathes. It is the last this she says before her entire world is pain. It's the last thing she thinks, too, surrendering willingly to the hands of her killer as she begins to wish only for a way for the pain to end.

_Mike_

He's dimly aware that he's crying. As he pulls Tina through the too-bright hall, he keeps envisioning Matt's last moments. An errant thought emerges:

[ _he died bravely._ ]

But he shoves that away angrily. That doesn't matter. Matt is _dead_. Mike wonders idly how much it hurt.

It couldn't have hurt more than this, watching without being able to help, watching while –

He shoves that away, too, and instead concentrates on Tina. She's not crying. Her face is pale, expressionless. She moves mechanically. Survival is just another chore now.

They run towards a classroom, empty except for some overturned desks. Behind him as they enter, Tina trips on the threshold, bringing them both crashing to the floor. At the sound, a shape begins to move towards them.

[ _it'll never end_ ]

But as the form moves closer, it takes on recognizable features. Cropped, blonde hair, a pristine track suit.

It's Sue Sylvester.

With a machine gun.

She says nothing, just motions for them to follow. She presses a partially concealed button on the wall, revealing a tiny room, complete with a minifridge and a squashy-looking loveseat. Mike gently maneuvers Tina onto it, then sits beside her. Sue sinks onto a stool that Mike hadn't previously noticed, and glances at her watch.

They site, and wait for a miracle. Or, Mike does, and maybe Tina. He's not sure what Sue is waiting for, although the way she continues to flash glances at her watch suggests that there's something.

_Probably recording the time that the destruction of the Glee club was successful_, Mike thinks. He's unable to stop a hysterical laugh from escaping at the thought, but subsides as he remembers (again) the look Matt gave him before he

[ _died._ ]

Mike's mind supplies the word even though he really does not want it to. He hunches down, and waits for the world to end.


	3. Chapter 3

**Title:** The Cemetery Dawn  
**Author:** StrangePhenomenon  
**Rating:** R  
**Characters/Pairing:** Eventual Puck/Kurt; other minor pairings  
**Genre:** horror/angst  
**Warnings:** Character death and gore. Also: slash and femslash.  
**Spoilers:** All episodes that are out, to be safe. MORE OBVIOUS SPOILERS IN THIS PART FOR 'NEVER BEEN KISSED'.  
**Disclaimer:** All characters and settings (except those of my own creation) belong to Fox.  
**Author's Note:** Title comes from the wonderful song Magenta by Hooverphonic. **Summary:** Zombie AU.  
**Word Count:** 339

_Kurt_

Looking for somewhere safe, yet again, they run into another surprise, and that surprise is Karofsky and Brittany. Santana shoves Brittany against a wall and kisses her, prompting an appreciative murmur from Puck. Finn just stares, mouth open so wide Kurt stifles a brief spurt of laughter.

The rest of them are eyeing Karofsky warily, because although life-or-death situations _should_ override personal issues, they really don't. To his credit, Karofsky doesn't start anything, merely shuffles his feet and returns Kurt's gaze calmly, ignoring the others.

[ _strong hands on his shoulders and lips much softer that he expected, and whatever Kurt has felt in the past, in this one frozen moment he understands perfectly, and the weight of it is so much that he gets the hell out of there before it breaks him. _]

Kurt looks away sharply, face flushing not from embarrassment or misplaced lust, but from the intensity of the memory, intensity he can still see in every line of Karofsky's body.

Mercedes is staring at him. He doesn't think he'll be able to stand it if she asks him anything, so he breaks the silence, and his voice is rougher than it should be.

"Did you – see anyone?" And yes, it's a deflection, but he still wants (needs) to know.

Karofsky nods. "Miss Pilsbury. She – " It's a moment before he continues.

"There was a bunch of use hiding in the cafeteria. But someone opened a door and they got in. Almost no one escaped. She got us out, but she got left behind."

They can all hear the sorrowful reverence in his tone, and Kurt looks at him with something like respect.

A few minutes later when they start to move again, he can't stop thinking about the look Karofsky gave him, the unabashed intimacy, and that's probably why he wanders away from the rest of them. When Kurt finally realizes his mistake, he looks around to see no one he knows, and a monster at the end of the hallway staring at him, all blood and torn clothes and endless hunger.


End file.
